A week seldom passes by without a news story about a love-starved child – abused by some step-mother/father who lives with a biological father or mother. Besides newspapers are replete with stories of violence that characterise our world: even fights over a political election, treating opponents like a foot ball!

Homes are battlefields as husbands beat the wives (or vice versa) they once pledged never to be parted from! Others substitute physical abuse with verbal assaults. Parents massacre their own children in the name of soliciting a better future from a witchdoctor’s shrine. Even ordinary friendships are not spared this scourge of loveless relationships.
I think of those whose ‘love’ for religion (read God) is reason for their terrorist attacks on the innocent. Kampalans, like many others, have tasted the brunt of this religious extremism. What kind of love for God excludes love for mankind?
We were created to love and be loved. This is God’s image in us. Psychologists say that without love people become dysfunctional in their character and conduct. We all need love, not just want it.
Unfortunately it is also true that “there is one kind of love but many imitations.” A man says to a love-starved girl that he loves her, and what he really means is he lusts after her body. When we are starved of love we tend to seek it in illegitimate ways and places.
It is therapeutic to read in Romans 5.8 that “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God loved us in spite of us; He loved us ere we ever knew or considered it. God’s love is not conditioned on our goodness or on our good conduct. He just loves you!
The greatest story of love is this: God had no need for us but we had need for Him. He has an only Son with whom they had never separated from eternity because between them there is pure, sublime love and have no need to be separated. And we, weak, sinners and God’s enemies, the very picture of wrath-deserving creatures.
Calvary Love is that God did the good you needed at no cost to you; He left no debt to be loved back! Such is the love of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin.” He became sin for us – he did not just become like us but He personified sin on the Cross.
That is why He was separated from the eternal love of His Father. There is only one thing that can separate one from God, SIN. Isaiah says that our iniquities make a separation between us and our God; our sins hide His face from us. Jesus had never known sin in His eternal existence. He did not sin and could not sin. So the only way He could experience sin is by becoming sin Himself.
Yet sin carries with it the judgement of God. So when He became sin, He suffered judgement on the Cross. He died physically since death came because of sin. He suffered spiritual death too, and He cried in that agonizing howl, “My God, My God; why have you forsaken me?” We shall never understand His pain at this moment, not only because it was for sin but also because our separation from God is our daily life. The Bible then summarises this in the assurance: this is a depiction of God’s unwavering love for you. What kind of love is this? It means God loves you extravagantly. He loves neither counting the cost to Himself nor setting a limit to His love for you. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul says that God lavished love on us! That is the exact picture of his love – He lavished it extravagantly.
However, we should not misinterpret this to be wastefulness. The Cross is not a place of waste. When Jesus died He brought genuine and unimpeachable salvation to all mankind. When we trust in His Cross we receive a salvation that cannot be improved or taken away from us. The writer to the Hebrews says that Jesus saves to the uttermost. God has given His best to save the worst - that is His love for you.
Secondly, you need to know that God’s love is reckless; God gave an only son. I have heard of depraved animists sacrificing their children, but entirely for selfish reasons and to no avail at all. Others take the children of other people to sacrifice them for their selfish ends. I have four children, three sons. I have none to spare for a sacrifice – I love them too much to give them away for anything, let alone for the salvation of another person.
It was necessary that one who is perfect should die to pay the price for our redemption. For without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins, and that blood must be perfect to efficiently atone for our sins. The only efficient sacrifice God had is God Himself. He had only one Son; He did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all. That is reckless love for you; He gave all He had. The Cross of Jesus is simultaneously an emblem of judgement and of salvation.
Thirdly, God’s love is stubborn; God never gives up even on the worst. Such is the magic of God’s love that He offers it again and again to your life’s end. If you are reading this message it is testimony that He has not given up on you. While there is breath in your nostrils, you have the chance to turn over your life to the Christ. His arms are open to receive yet another repentant sinner.
My life before 1976 was lined with numerous opportunities to respond to His salvation. I was inaugurated to church attendance nine months before I was born, and born into church – some will call me a cradle Anglican. Throughout my childhood I heard the pure Gospel of salvation preached by the East African Revival brethren who frequented our home church with conventions. My teenage years were saturated with testimonies of God’s stubborn love for me. And yet I did not take it in!
Some are born to saved parents; they hear the Gospel throughout their infancy, childhood and on into adulthood without surrendering their life to Christ. Yet even now, God’s stubborn love pursues them. He says, “I show my love for you in that while you were still a sinner, Christ died for you.”
The only appropriate response to this love is, “Please Lord, forgive me my sins – even the sin of unbelief. I am coming home today.” Will you do that today? God’s love waits for a sinner coming home. Amen.

Rev. Canon Dr. John Senyonyi  is the Vice Chancellor, UCU